


A Rough Night

by Terrorfecta



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Implied Pitch Romance, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pale Slut Karkat, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 01:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12332475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terrorfecta/pseuds/Terrorfecta
Summary: Karkat arrives back home to find Kankri dealing with the aftermath of a black romance. Something in his pump biscuit twists pale, despite already having a moirail. Oh, he is going to regret this.A short bit of fluff about pale cuckoldry. Because reasons.





	A Rough Night

Blood. Fucking everywhere. It had just been droplets in the hallway, turned into a small puddle outside his door, and larger droplets left a trail up to the couch. It stunk up the place worse than Gamzee after a night hitting the bottle (complete with the inevitable fountain of vomit and regret), and it was staining the frog-damned floor covering. Karkat nearly choked on a scream of rage until he saw the pitiful little thing curled up in his favorite spot.

The anger didn't disappear, but it did condense into a little ball of his usual hate as he sauntered closer. “You stupid fucking idiot,” he hissed once he recognized the pile of blood and lacerations. “What happened?”

Kankri didn't answer. He was missing his sweater, and it was hard to tell anything else except that his shoes had been kicked off and his socks were soaked in what looked like mud. When Karkat went to get the med kit from the bathroom, he let out a little whimper.

It had been hard, at first, adjusting to the new world. Troll-human relations weren't exactly great at the moment, since about half the human population had that lingering memory of fuschia fish-bitch wrecking their planet, just below the surface of conscious thought. But Kankri's protests were usually peaceful. Apparently this had changed since the last time Jade had dragged him to one of the events.

“Fine, don't tell me anything. Move so I can see what I'm doing.” When Karkat moved to adjust Kankri, his dancester flinched, actually flinched. Karkat snapped back like he was going to get burned, but Kankri turned to reveal his back without an explanation. His eyes had closed, and he seemed to hunch down on himself, maybe in pain, but maybe in shame, too.

“That's not a weapon,” Karkat murmured as he took a warm miniature drying plane and cleaned the cuts. They were scratches, four right next to each other, and judging by the lines, it was from claws. Not even kismesis claws. These were deep enough to cut to muscle, and if mediculler technology hadn't advanced quite a bit with human hybridization, this would have been a matter for a doctorturer, or maybe even a hospital.

“'m sorry,” Kankri whispered. “About the couch.” He sounded like a grub, and Karkat had to bite down on a purr of sympathy. This wasn't pity he was feeling. Nope. He had Gamzee, and one moirail was more than enough, even if troll quadrants were starting to get tangled and less rigid. With slurry donations becoming voluntary under Feferi's rule, it wasn't unheard of for certain trolls to have two or even three casual matesprits at a time, donating plenty of material to make up for the lack of mandatory participation. He was not going to go down that road in the other red quadrant. It just didn't seem right.

“Fuck the couch,” he replied. “What nook-sniffing bulgemunch did this to you? And I hope they look a lot fucking worse than you do.” Karkat moved to Kankri's arms, turning him slightly. The troll refused to unclench his legs, so that was a mightier task than implied. The scratches Karkat could see extended down and across his grub scars. Karkat winced in sympathy.

“We don't have much of an ablution block, but you're welcome to it, Kankri. Gam's not going to be home for a couple of hours. He's got some meeting with the humans about religious something or fucking other. Didn't think he'd take a page from your book about triggers.”

The joke fell flat, and Karkat sighed. Kankri's expression was definitely pitiful, broken in a way that Karkat hated. It seemed like Kankri had spaced out, and when Karkat moved to rinse off the warm drying plane, he found that the troll had frozen, not blinking and barely breathing.

“Legs down,” Karkat told him, pretty used to trolls not responding. Sollux was a job and a half when he got into one of his moods, and the weeks after Gamzee returned to them, it had been pretty similar. Kankri responded the same way those two did, with meek submission after a repeated order.

Holy Troll Jegus. The scratches were a lot lower than Karkat had first assumed they would be, and… yeah, those definitely headed straight for his dancestor's bone sheath. Oh fuck no, he was not helping with that.

“Into the ablution block,” Karkat ordered. Kankri did so, in the shuffling way of someone who had sustained injury. No surprise there, but he seemed to favor his core, hunched over in a way that made Karkat's bloodpusher squeeze in a decidedly too pale way.

“Do you want me to call the officerators for you?” he managed once he saw Kankri's flesh under the harsher light. Kankri shook his head, and Karkat left that part of his line of questioning where it was. Even if the worst—please, please let this be blown out of proportion—had happened, Kankri didn't seem like the type to keep it inside. He would be the first one on the phone to call the police and the officerators and possibly even the threshecutioners. Kankri did not take a trigger lying down.

“Fine. Strip.” Kankri finally reacted then, jolting at the command.

“Excuse me?” he snapped, making Karkat unclench. He hadn't even known he had been wound up that tightly.

“It was a joke. I'll start up the shower, and then make you some cluckbeast soup.” Karkat could see that the words were making Kankri seethe. Good. There was less to pity about Kankri on a rampage. He stomped over to the controls and fiddled with them, trying not to think about the troll behind him. Trying not to think of the pitiful, stupid troll in his ablution block. Kankri could probably use a really nice hug right about now.

Damn it.

When Karkat started the water, he felt a gentle touch on his arm. Even Gamzee didn't sneak a touch on his moirail, so it certainly was a feeling when Kankri leaned his head against his dancestor's shoulder.

“I… I'm a moirailed troll,” Karkat murmured over the sound of the water.

“I know. I apologize for this potentially triggering display.” But Kankri didn't let up, didn't back off. It wasn't until Kankri let his clothing drop away that Karkat forced himself out of the room and into the nutrition block. This was… pale? Flushed? Was Kankri trying to get into his flushed quadrant? That was… well, not exactly the weirdest thing to happen, but pretty up there.

Karkat heard the water shut off before he was done cooking, and he sighed, leaving the pot on the stove while he fetched some clothing. While he had managed to resist the colorful redecoration of the wardrobe that several of his friends had undergone, he did have a few things that weren't a black shirt with his symbol on it.

A short knock on the ablution block door, and Karkat set the clothes on the sink. “They're clean,” he told the figure still standing in the shower stall. “Come and get some food once you're changed.” He didn't have to wait long for the older troll, either. Kankri had cleaned himself off and come to the kitchen even faster than his dancestor had expected.

Kankri looked like a drowned squeakbeast, his figure curled protectively over his wounds and his skin flushed with the heat of the water. While they were about the same size—after all, dancestors were genetically almost identical—Karkat had a good fifty pounds of muscle on the scrawny redblood. His hair stuck flat and limp around his horns and down his neck, except for a few tendrils that desperately fought gravity. And he sat in that dejected way of his, not speaking, still clearly smarting from whatever had happened.

“So,” Karkat began, serving the soup.

“It was a consensual affair taken too far,” Kankri replied, his voice finally raising past a whisper. “I did not realize that the rush of adrenaline and endorphines would mask the pain quite so well or I would have put a stop to it.”

“Good. Because you deserve to be treated properly, and a quadrant is based on trust and mutual boundaries.” It felt strange having to lecture his dancestor like this, but Karkat continued. It was the same speech he had given several of the others, after all. Now that there was a world of dating options again, some of them—especially that idiot Eridan—were bound to make truly stupid mistakes.

“I...” Kankri trailed off, and his gaze went down to the soup. “Thank you, Karkat. I am afraid my judgment may have been unfocused in this case, and I do intend on reconsidering my quadrant possibilities, as this does not seem to be working out as intended for either of us. While I am not so naive anymore as to attempt to eschew the idea of black romance entirely, I think I shall focus on my flushed quadrants instead, as they tend to cause less physical damage.”

Karkat had only looked away for a moment, but when he looked back, Kankri was leaking pale red tears in slow, slow drops. “Fuck,” Karkat hissed, before he went over and hugged the troll, instinct overriding sense.

It was instinct, he would continue to blame, when he landed the first shoosh-pap to quiet the sobbing. Kankri was a lot like Gamzee when he cried, with a little bit of a honk from that stuffed nose. Karkat still shooshed him, purring and chirruping in the quiet, soothing way that he did with the clown.

Kankri had a lot of feelings. No surprise there. But when they started coming out, prompting a feelings jam right there in the nutrition block with no pile to be found, Karkat had to listen. Kankri had no one else to tell these things to.

This continued until Kankri was quietly purring, pacified under the expert papping and the occasional shoosh. Karkat figured it could be a secret, embarrassing bit of infidelity until he felt a pair of arms wrap around him.

Gamzee was at least a head taller than he was at this point, and when the clown leaned down to rest a head on his shoulder, Karkat had to fight the urge to stiffen and immediately cower to beg for forgiveness. Instead, Gamzee moved to press a single finger to his lips, requesting silence as Karkat continued to run a claw through Kankri's hair. In return, Gamzee moved to preen Karkat.

Between comforting and being comforted, Karkat could barely think, the fuzzy feelings of pale making him purr contentedly. Gamzee offered a low, nearly sub-sonic rumble of a purr in response. Kankri seemed to feel it, but he was so pacified that when he saw the purple-blood, his first response was to chirp like a grub being pleasantly surprised.

“Look at you, getting your motherfuckin pale on without me,” Gamzee thrummed, moving to stroke Kankri's horns in the same way Karkat liked. “Watching you pap this pitiful little fucker is a miracle.”

“You're not angry?” Karkat managed, though it was through a haze of good feelings. Gamzee only chuckled, still purring when he offered a kiss to Karkat's jaw, pale as sugar and just as sweet.

“Never. In fact, you got any other friends needing a pap? Because watching you work is fuckin beautiful.”

Karkat snorted, and used the hand not pacifying Kankri to stroke Gamzee's horns. Pale cuckolding? Now there was something. To quote Equius, who hopefully would not be on the list of potential pale hook-ups (and not just because Nepeta would be tagging along), this was downright lewd.

**Author's Note:**

> The formatting was being weird, so let me know if I missed spacing a paragraph somewhere.


End file.
